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In a rather surprising move, Microsoft has made the Office suite of apps — Word, Excel, and PowerPoint — free to download and use on the iPad and iPhone. Previously, an Office 365 subscription was required — but now, unless you’re a business customer or after some advanced functionality, you can now open and edit Office docs, spreadsheets, and slideshows for free on your iOS device. If all that wasn’t exciting enough, Microsoft also announced that the free Office suite is coming to Android, with beta access starting today. Both the iOS and Android versions of the Office suite have Dropbox integration baked in, following the announcement of a strategic partnership between the two companies earlier this week.

At first glance, it seems odd that Microsoft would give away one of its most lucrative products for free — but don’t worry, it all makes perfect business sense. For most of Microsoft’s life, a huge portion of its profits were derived from sales of the Office suite. Office, much like Windows, was the de facto productivity suite — it was installed on almost every home, school, and work machine. For the longest time, the various Office apps produced file formats that could only be viewed and edited by Office apps — and so it was almost impossible for alternatives to establish a beachhead. However, as the world’s reliance on Windows has diminished — as people move to smartphones, tablets, Chromebooks, and myriad other form factors — Microsoft has been forced to embrace other platforms, adopt open file formats, and generally reassess its strategy.

Excel for Android

Word for Android

Word for iPhone (Click to zoom in)

On the smartphone and tablet, where you can get reasonably good productivity apps for a few dollars (or free), Microsoft doesn’t have much choice than to price Office equivalently. One of the biggest strengths of Office is that, because it’s installed almost everywhere, you can fairly reasonably send a Word, Excel, or PowerPoint file to someone and expect that they can: a) open it, and b) probably edit it as well. As more and more of our time is spent on smartphones and tablets, Microsoft has to move quickly to ensure that Office remains dominant in the face of alternative, cheaper, disruptive apps — and thus, here we are, with free versions of the most excellent Office for iOS and Android.

While the Office apps are free for file viewing, editing, and creation, an Office 365 subscription — which is about $10 per month — is still required for some advanced functions, such as column formatting in Word or chart editing in Excel. You’ll also need an Office 365 subscription to open files from a business OneDrive or Dropbox account, which will ensure that corporate and enterprise customers don’t cancel their subscriptions any time soon. All round, this is a very savvy move from Microsoft to ensure the continued reign of Office — and at the same time, boosting its relevance in the mobile computing market.

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Like you said, actually very smart by Microsoft. It’s weird how MS these days acts like a company who can do more than stay the course with established products. Good for them.

ethelyn092

up to I saw the paycheck of $7243 , I didn’t believe that my brother woz like realie erning money part-time on-line. . there uncle has been doing this for under fifteen months and recently repaid the loans on there appartment and purchased a brand new BMW M3 . see here now……>> -> START MARKETING ONLINE WORK!!! <-

I can’t wait to have Office on my Nexus 6. Though I wish they’d offer a standalone purchase, and perhaps a discount for that standalone for people who own it on their desktops. I don’t really care for online integration (which I have blocked on my copy of 2013 because security) but I love the product.

Zunalter

So if MS isn’t making any money on this move, what’s the point of being relevant in the space? Is it just to stay relevant everywhere else so that people don’t stop using Office on their PCs?

Mirimon

being relevant transitions to dependence, which then will transition to dominant control and secured income.

Zunalter

Secured income from what? If they are giving the software away, there isn’t a great revenue stream.

Mirimon

secured from the future you see… it’s like giving some homeless girl heroin, the first few hits are free, then, before she realizes it, she has become a crack whore, paying anything she can for her dependency.

While that is vile, and exaggerated, imagine if you will, a moment when their product is not just on every platform, but actually being used, and really, the ONLY thing being used. What then, when the new version comes out and the old is no longer supported, will all the people do? They will buy the new one, because there is nothing else (most won’t look into alternatives, and by that point an alternative will likely not work with the others, and likely not be as good in ability.

how many options do you honestly have when it comes to putting fuel in your car?? it is for this same reason we cannot simply switch, all of us, to more efficient and less costly methods of power. The control is in place, and now part of us.,

As I said in a prior post, this technique can also be used for relationship control:
Take a girl, and take away all that she has, replacing it instead with something from yourself. Knowing it or not, she has become dependent on you….. now, once that dependence has been achieved, YOU be the one to promote her becoming independent… and as she grows to think she is independent, that too is something you gave her…. it wields great control over her, or even nations…

Zunalter

Sure, I can see that they want everyone using their Office products everywhere so there is no room for an upstart and so nobody ever considers another productivity suite, but unless they are going to randomly start charging for it after making it free, I am not sure how they are going to monetize the ubiquity. Also, with this move, they are tacitly acknowledging that if they didn’t make it free that they would lose relevance, so pulling the rug out from a group of “addicts” later is only going to encourage one of their rivals to step in.

Mirimon

The hardware markets these will all go on, are areas msft attempted to penetrate with its own hardware and most consider it failed in. Instead, let those devices have their little space, and controll them from the inside. Then, when practically everything inside is msft, make the hardware that would allegedly do it all better (or at least have the better features of their software/os products. Sort of like google, who went from search engine, to breaching and innovating the tech-hardware arena, because everything has google on it now..

jqbecker

…and how will they make money with this new deal?

Mirimon

free= more people get it, and will likely use them since they are already locked into the workforce. When everybody is using them, and depending on them, then MSFT can simply turn on the “$” switch and charge for continuing/upgrading service… and the users would really have no choice as they need to continue using what everybody else uses, for compatibility and other similar reasons. The cost to swap to some other system, which is not as well known and might not work together, is too risky. It’s actually an old strategy for conquering, Napolean used it well. (also works on chicks)

lk

MS will probably never charge you for free, basic Office service. It take a lot of effort to gain and maintain market dominance. So why ruin it for short term cash flow? For MS Office, the reason to be dominant is self-evident now. Revenue comes in the form of corporate subscriptions as well as paid consumer subscriptions of Office 365.
This is the right way to do business. MS is beginning to see how they need to let their product divisions act like independent businesses. When you have good products, why not let the divisions operate in the optimal ways. Money is money. Why not build the best product they can instead of limiting them to MS platform? That also forces the other divisions (eg. Windows OS) to catch up and offer better products. Smart move, I think.

thiagofeitosa123

came the “xpremiumfree” website that provides logins and passwords for variouspornographic sites for free. http://zip.net/bnp5ZW visit and discover !!!o….

I just copied 5 cells one of which was a simple cell x cell calculation. What was copied in that cell (copied from the line above) was not the calculation but the value from the previous line.

I.e. Useless.

You can do this copy/paste correctly in the on-line (web) version and it’s hardly the sort of thing you expect to be missing even in a cut-down version.

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